Sir William Browder KCMG; Head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign; CEO Hermitage Capital Management; Author of Two Best-sellers: Freezing Order and Red Notice
Bill Browder is an investor advisor turned human rights activist. His story of uncovering deception and theft through his work grips audiences and eventually propelled him towards a life of human rights advocacy. He has successfully worked to get various versions of the Magnitsky Act to be passed in several countries around the world.
Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, which was the investment adviser to the largest foreign investment fund in Russia until 2005, when Bill was denied entry to the country and declared a “threat to national security” as a result of his battle against corporate corruption.
Following his expulsion, the Russian authorities raided his offices, seized Hermitage Fund’s investment companies and used them to steal $230 million of taxes that the companies had previously paid. When Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, investigated the crime, he was arrested by the same officers he implicated, tortured for 358 days, and killed in custody at the age of 37 in November 2009.
Since then, Browder has spent the last 5 years fighting for justice for Mr. Magnitsky. The Russian government exonerated and even promoted some of the officials involved so Browder took the case to America. His campaigning led to the US Congress adopting the ‘Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act’ in 2012, which imposed visa sanctions and asset freezes on those involved in the detention, ill-treatment and death of Sergei Magnitsky (as well as in other human rights abuses). This law was the first time the US sanctioned Russia in 35 years and became the model for all subsequent US sanctions against Russia.
Browder is currently working to have similar legislation passed in Magnitsky’s name across the European Union.
Bill Browder on Vladimir Putin’s Money Laundering Operation
Bill Browder on the Magnitsky Act
Bill Browder on How to Deal with Putin
Bill Browder on the Russia-Ukraine War
Bill Browder on Vladimir Putin’s Money Laundering Operation
Bill Browder’s Speech Topics
Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath
When Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail in 2009, Bill Browder cast aside his business career and made it his life’s mission to pursue justice for Sergei. That mission was to uncover who had killed Sergei and profited from the $230 million corruption scheme that he exposed. As Browder and his team tracked the money that flowed out of Russia, they discovered that Vladimir Putin himself was one of the beneficiaries of the crime. After Western law-enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He will stop at nothing to protect his wealth and power. Freezing Order is a stirring morality tale about how one man can take on one of the most dangerous and ruthless villains in the world.
This topic is based on Bill Browder’s 2022 best-selling book Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice
Bill Browder takes audiences on the journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through his battles with Russian oligarchs in the turbulent landscape of post-Soviet Union Moscow, then to his eventual expulsion from Russia on Putin’s orders. Bill describes a graphic portrait of the Russian government as a criminal enterprise wielding all the power of a sovereign state illuminates his personal transformation from financier to human rights activist, campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend.
This topic is based on Bill Browder’s 2015 best-selling book Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.